A Colne Valley village whose economy was built on one factory: R. Hunt and Company's Atlas Works made agricultural machinery and employed roughly half the male workforce by 1900, closing in 1988.
Earls Colne Airfield, a wartime airfield, is now a general aviation airfield with a golf club and a business park on the site, so the village has a small-business and light-industrial cluster unusual for its size.
The High Street carries the everyday independents, pubs, cafes, village shops and services, for a wide rural catchment between Halstead and Colchester.
Earls Colne had a recorded population of about 3,971 at the 2021 census.